Queen of the Ring

2024

Action / Biography / Drama / Sport

20
Rotten Tomatoes Critics - Certified Fresh 73% · 66 reviews
Rotten Tomatoes Audience - Upright 88% · 100 ratings
IMDb Rating 6.4/10 10 2843 2.8K

sports biography pro wrestler drama

Director

Ash Avildsen Photo
Ash Avildsen

Top cast

Cara Buono Photo
Cara Buono as Bertha
Walton Goggins Photo
Walton Goggins as Jack Pfefer
Mike Seely Photo
Mike Seely as Spectator #2
Tyler Posey Photo
Tyler Posey as G. Bill
720p.WEB 1080p.WEB 1080p.WEB.x265
1.26 GB
1280*690
English 2.0
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 19 min
Seeds 18
2.58 GB
1920*1036
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 19 min
Seeds 29
2.34 GB
1920*1036
English 5.1
NR
Subtitles us  
23.976 fps
2 hr 19 min
Seeds 22

Movie Reviews

Reviewed by reddiemurf81 7 / 10

Millie! Millie!! Millie!!!

Mildred Bliss was an ordinary single mother who worked as a waitress in her mother's diner. While she worked hard and cared for her son, she was bored & dreamed of doing something more with her life.One day, Millie & her mother attended a wrestling match (that featured a match between Billy Wolfe & Gorgeous George), and Millie immediately became obsessed with learning how to wrestle. She proceeded to hound Billy Wolfe until he agreed to train her.Fast forward some time, Mildred Burke (which sounded tougher than Bliss) is now headlining wrestling events under Billy Wolfe's management.The rest, as they say, is history,,,While I don't really follow wrestling like I used to, from the late 90s to the late 2000s I followed professional wrestling like crazy. Most every Monday & Thursday night I would be watching Raw & Smackdown. I even fantasized about taking it up myself (daydreaming mostly, cause I'm certainly not tough enough to handle the squared cirlce). The action, the drama, the hilarity,, it was awesome.Cut to present day, I saw this movie trailer on YouTube, and saw that Emily Bett Rickards (loved her as Felicity in the Arrowverse) was playing lead. So I just had to see this film. I had no clue that she was playing a real life pioneer in women's sports entertainment. I remember seeing Mae Young & the Fabulous Moolah in the WWE back in the early 2000s. I didn't get it then, but now I obviously see that they were also pioneers.Rickards deserves to be acknowledged for her performance in this movie. She's amazing! (Yes, I'm infatuated, but really)The entire cast is great. Speaking of which, what a cast! Lucas, Eastwood, Posey, Goggins, Woll, Buono, as well as the others I'm not as familiar with. Spectacular performances.
Reviewed by ferguson-6 7 / 10

a pioneer of women's wrestling

Greetings again from the darkness. Even among sports fans and women's activists, Mildred Burke is not a household name. Writer-director Ash Avildsen and co-writer Alston Ramsay set out to correct this by adapting Ms. Burke's own writing and the 2010 book "The Queen of the Ring: Sex, Muscles, Diamonds and the Making of an American Legend" by Jeff Leen. Avildsen is the son of Oscar winning director John Avildsen (ROCKY, 1976; THE KARATE KID, 1982).Mildred Burke was a three-time World Champion in Women's Wrestling, and the first million dollar female athlete. Her career spanned the 1930's into the 1950's, and the film opens in the ring during the brutal 1954 Women's World Championship match. Rather than finish that match, filmmaker Avildsen holds that until the finale and instead flashes back to Burke's early obsession with her desire to wrestle. Emily Bett Rickards ("Arrow") stars as Mildred, and she possesses the physicality and charm to pull off what we'd expect from a pioneer in women's sports. She displays toughness, determination, and talent in the ring - plus the savvy needed for marketing herself and the sport.There are some issues with the movie. At times it's difficult to follow the timeline and it is uncomfortably choppy in its storytelling approach. However, the dynamics of this woman and her true story are such that we focus on the good stuff and appreciate her accomplishments. Additionally, there are some strong supporting performances. Josh Lucas plays wrestler Billy Wolfe, who recognizes Mildred's potential and becomes her promoter, her loving husband, her cheating husband, and her business partner. Walton Goggins plays legendary promoter Jack Pfefer, Tyler Posey plays Wolfe's son and Mildred love interest G Bill, Francesca Eastwood (yes, Clint's daughter) plays wrestler Mae Young, Adam Demos plays Mildred's friend and popular wrestler Gorgeous George, and Gavin Casalengo portrays Mildred's son.We learn her story dates back to a time when many laws prohibited women from wrestling, and Mildred's early opportunities took place at traveling carnivals. Her motivation led to her pledge to her toddler son that they would not live an ordinary life ... and wrestling got her out of the apron at her mom's café. There is an obligatory training montage, and there is even a moment when Mildred's impact is compared to Jackie Robinson breaking the race barrier in baseball. The terrific soundtrack (not quite to the level of AMERICAN GRAFFITTI) helps offset some of the cheesy posing and strutting, even though these were keys in Mildred gaining popularity. Filmmaker Avildsen ends the film with photos and bio profiles on each of the characters as the closing credits begin. It's a fitting end and tribute for those who drove the early days of Women's wrestling.The film opens in theaters on March 7, 2025.
Reviewed by A_Different_Drummer 7 / 10

biopic with special sauce

Ask any reviewer how many sports biopics they have seen and the answer will always be "too many." QUEEN is an ambitious little project, you can tell that by the over-two-hour runtime. The pacing, the script, the editing, everything is just slightly uneven and unpolished. However, to compensate, there is a legitimate sense of fun imbued in the film, something not common in these sorts of tales. Lots of hidden talent both in front of and behind the camera. Emily Bett Rickards will shock her fans from the Arrowverse as she digs into the lead role and gives it everything she has got. Behind the camera is the son of one of America's best-known directors, and playing the "heel" in the story is a young woman with sharply defined features not seen since the days of Clint Eastwood. His daughter, in fact. Entertaining. ((Designated "IMDb Top Reviewer." Please check out my list "167+ Nearly-Perfect Movies (with the occasional Anime or TV miniseries) you can/should see again and again (1932 to the present))
Read more IMDb reviews

18 Comments

Be the first to leave a comment